Gentrified Bluff; Uranium drilling at disaster site; Runoff watch

And a few more tidbits for your Tuesday reading

Mining Monitor

Mexican Hat uranium mill tailings repository and Raplee Ridge. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

Consider this news release headline: “Laramide Resource Ltd. Announces Results from the Diamond Drilling Program at its Crownpoint-Churchrock Uranium Project.” It just seems wrong. Why? Because Church Rock, New Mexico, is the site of one of the nation’s worst nuclear disasters in history. In 1979, United Nuclear Corporation’s uranium tailings impoundment dam failed, sending 94 million gallons of acidic liquid raffinate and 1,100 tons of uranium mill tailings rushing down the Puerco River and across the “checkerboard” area of the Navajo Nation. The normally dry arroyo ran bank to bank with yellow-tinged, noxious-smelling water as it passed through Gallup miles downstream from the dam. The slug of material, containing an estimated 1.36 tons of uranium and 46 trillion picocuries of gross-alpha activity, continued past Gallup and down the Puerco for another 50 miles or more, seeping into the sandy earth and the aquifer as it went, and leaving behind stagnant and poisonous pools from which livestock drank and contaminated drinking water wells. The site still has not been remediated properly. 

There are certainly valid arguments that nuclear power, and therefore uranium mining, is necessary to keep the grid humming as we electrify everything and ditch fossil fuels. Still, shouldn’t some places be off-limits? And shouldn’t the site of such a horrible incident be a hallowed place upon which the industry that perpetrated it should not be allowed to trespass? 

***

It’s warming up and drying out in the lower elevations, which means the mining companies are doing their thing again. And their thing, so far, seems to be making big announcements with little substance that might entice an investor or two to blow their life savings on a potential hole in the ground. Anfield Energy, for example, said it had demonstrated “the economic viability of its Velvet-Wood and Slick Rock Uranium and Vanadium Projects.” The Velvet-Wood mine is in Utah’s Lisbon Valley, just over the hill from the Lisbon Copper Mine; and Slick Rock is near the Colorado hamlet of the same name. Thor Energy announced it had received “very encouraging vanadium assay results” for samples from its Wedding Bell and Radium Mountain Projects in the Uravan Mineral Belt of Western Colorado. Thor says it also plans to begin sample drilling at its Vanadium King claims located in-between Cisco and Dewey Bridge in Utah. And Moab Minerals is “gearing up to start drilling” at its REX uranium-vanadium project near Uravan, Colorado. 

***

Meanwhile, a cadre of U.S. senators from Western states are trying to codify their interpretation of the General Mining Law of 1872. As you probably know, the antiquated law allows mining companies and individuals to stake claims on public land so long as they can demonstrate it contains valuable minerals. For a long time, regulators also allowed the companies to dump waste rock, tailings, and other waste by the millions of tons on public land adjacent to their claims. But in two recent cases, judges have ruled that, in fact, a mining company must have a valid claim on the land in order to use it as a dump (which is still, atrocious, but an improvement). Now Nevada Democratic Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, along with Idaho Republicans and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona Independent, are pushing the “Mining Regulatory Clarity Act” which would lock in the waste-dumping allowance provision. Of course they’re claiming that their legislation is critical to the clean energy transition

---

Random Real Estate Room

Oh, how it breaks my heart when one of my favorite places goes full gentrification. In this case it’s Bluff, Utah, that dusty little hamlet on the banks of the San Juan River. I know, I know, this has been in the works for at least two decades. Still. 

Bluff has always held a special place in my heart: the silty San Juan, gurgling quietly under cottonwoods; the sandstone walls, glowing as from within in the last light of a stormy September day. The old Dairy Cafe and the post-backpack ordeal milkshakes and greasy burgers. The place had a dusty, desert grittiness to it that seemed impervious to exorbitant real estate prices and a turn-off to the wealthy. It was, in my mind, a future Heartbreak Refugia: a place I could go when it all went to shit and I could get myself a little piece of dirt and put a trailer on it and meditate on stone and water until I, too, was stone. 

Ain’t gonna happen, I’m afraid. The days of semi-affordable land in Bluff are long gone. Instead, for a mere $3.25 million, you can have a piece of “gorgeous property (that) is home to a large ancient native American cave with a flowing spring, slot canyons, and an abundance of petroglyph murals and ancient symbols.”

Sorry, but this friggin’ disgusts me. Some places just shouldn’t be bought and sold for any price. This is one of them.

---

Runoff Watch

And now, time for a brief May 1 snowpack report. The melt is on! And with it, the runoff. High elevation snowpack stations (e.g. Columbus Basin in the La Plata Mountains) have begun recording a steep drop over the past few days, while ones at middle-high altitudes (La Sals in SE Utah) have been in steep melt-mode for about two weeks. Rivers are a-rising fast. Here’s a Colorado River update from reader Dave Grossman for all of you Predict the Peak players (there’s still plenty of time to join the fun!)

As for the Dolores River, it too is climbing and will almost certainly continue doing so since releases from McPhee Dam just began. Reader Jerry Zink was lucky enough to float the Gypsum Valley to Bedrock section in late April and it sounded pretty darned nice, even if the campsites were overgrown with prickly pears. Here’s the hydrograph for the Dolores at Gateway: